The 19-year-old’s Hy-Vee identification badge showed his first name and listed “stocker” and “checker” as his primary duties. Curtis — along with a mother to three daughters and a retired BNSF railroad worker — weighed in on the hot-button issue of raising the minimum wage while having lunch in Hy-Vee’s eatery.

In his State of the State address, Gov. Pat Quinn called for a raise of Illinois’ $8.25-an-hour minimum wage to at least $10 an hour. In the State of the Union address President Barack Obama outlined his administration’s desire to see the minimum wage increased to $9 an hour.

“I’m all for raising the minimum wage,” said Curtis, who graduated from ROWVA High School in 2012. “It would help younger people. It would give younger people more money to spend and younger people, I think, want to spend more.

“When you’re starting out, there is much to pay for.”

Curtis earns $8.40 an hour at Hy-Vee — a place he has worked since the age of 17 and, he said, has “treated me very well.”

“Hy-Vee is a really good company,” Curtis said. “They treat me really well here and always have. And the people I work with are great.”

To get 40 hours a week Curtis also works at OSF St. Mary Medical Center.

“I clean beds there,” he said. “I’ve been there four months and it pays $8.25 an hour — but I work second shift so I can make $9.45 an hour.

“The people there are really nice, too. They treat me really well.”

Curtis said he started working while in high school because he “wanted more responsibility.”

“I wanted the challenge of having a job and going to school,” he said. “I wanted the responsibility. You gotta start somewhere.”

Curtis is saving up for school. He said he wants to attend Carl Sandburg College

“My long-term goal is to be police,” he said. “Hopefully here in Galesburg.”

A woman who asked to be identified only as Crystal sat at one of the tables behind Curtis. She was having lunch with her 4-year-old daughter.

Like Curtis, Crystal said she would welcome a raise in the minimum wage.

“I’m not working right now,” she explained. “It’s a day-care issue, really. It’s just cheaper for me to stay at home because I can’t find a job that would even cover the expense of day care.”

Crystal’s husband spent 10 years in the Army — serving tours in Iraq in 2003 and 2009. She worked in a before-school/after-school program in Tazewell County before becoming a Department of Defense civilian employee as a preschool teacher.

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Along with minimum wage, Crystal said preschool is another issue Americans should be talking about.

“I would like to see universal preschool — at least for kids who are one year away from kindergarten,” she said. “Even if it’s just half a day. Kids get so much out of it and it’s really important.

“It’s vital to help kids prepare for school.”

Crystal’s husband is a welder with John Deere — and though he spends two hours a day on the road and works as many as 12 hours a day, she said it pays well.

“We’re lucky,” she said. “But people need to realize that people getting out of the military rarely go right into a civilian job.

“My husband and I were both unemployed for a time. And during the transition you qualify for no help from the state because of your previous earnings. We eventually got the medical card for the kids, but we didn’t qualify for any help.”

That’s why, she said, minimum wage is such an important issue.

“There are plenty of military families who struggle to find work after getting out,” she said. “We have friends who are trying to live off minimum-wage jobs and they can’t do it. They have to get help from the state.”

While Crystal and her daughter started their lunch, one of Hy-Vee’s roundtable regulars was finishing up another morning of talking about all things topical.

Like a lot of people when asked to talk wages in America, the Hy-Vee Philosopher wanted to remain anonymous.

“The Hy-Vee Philosopher?” he said when given a name. “That makes me sound like I talk too much and too loud.”

Philosopher grew up working on a farm, spent 43 years of his adult life working for the railroad and was raised in a join-the-union, vote-Democrat house.

“In one way, I see the raise-the-minimum-wage side,” he said. “I’m a fifth-generation railroader. My life experiences tell me everyone who works for it should earn a good wage and the minimum wage should be higher.”

But Philosopher said he sees the other side of the argument, too.

“I see a lot of small businesspeople are against it,” he said. “And if you listen to them, you have to understand their concerns. You don’t want to drive small business under.

“I worry about small businesses and I worry about how people are going to survive in this economy.”

Philosopher said he wonders why there are no answers.

“OK, I’m for raising the minimum wage,” he said. “But I’m the first one to admit I don’t have the answers. But isn’t that what we elect people to do — to work and find answers to these problems?

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“We always hear opposite sides of the argument — but I just don’t hear a lot of answers. I understand that there are opposing sides. I understand that maybe one side is for it and one is against it. But what can we do to find a way to help people? What can we do to stimulate the kind of jobs people need to live?”